Sunday, October 2, 2011

White Whale Vol. 1 Preview

Hard copies arrive at the house Wednesday. If you have gone, or can go, to J.P. Knit & Stitch this weekend, you can have a look at the draft copy and the samples. Like the cover? Wait until you see the interior. It's all thanks to my genius sister and Matt Kish, the artist whose illustrations are featured throughout the book. Here's the full cover image.

Here's a preview of the first pattern: The Castaway, based on the chapter of the same name.

After I finished Ambergris, this was the first Moby-Dick pattern I conceived. I came up with the idea for the photographs before I considered the details of the hat, because the image of Pip bobbing in the water, driven crazy by the vast emptiness of the sea around him, made such a strong impression on me during earlier Moby-Dick readings. Even though I hadn't read the novel for years, I could remember the sentence about Pip's head "showing like a head of cloves" on the surface of the sea.

Chris was a great sport. The texture of the hat is not actually bobbles; it's worked in the round and doesn't have large individual protrusions. I wanted to keep it unisex if worked in the right color.

Once I swatched and sketched and decided on my texture pattern, I found the perfect yarn: Lorna's Laces Honor. So soft and warm, so lush. As I knit with it I called it "Lorna's Laces Awesometown." The hat takes only one skein of the MC and about 30 yards of a contrasting color, for which you could use a second color of Honor or another complimentary DK-weight yarn you have in your stash.

Note: The hat blocked out fabulously after its salt water bath. And now it smells like the sea.

The individual pattern is ready for download for $5.00 now:

Waiting for the whole book? The price will be $22 for both perfect-bound hard copy and pdf version. You can shoot me an email if you positively cannot wait and want to preorder.